Church squatted
In the evening of Friday the 22nd of August 2014, activists occupied the former St. Albertus Magnus church in Dortmund which was unused for over 7 years. Only minutes after the occupation was made public, nearly 40 supporters came to the area and held a gathering in front of the church in solidarity with the project and the squatters. Of course, it didn’t take long before the cops also arrived at the location, but they didn’t attempt to raid the building, and instead controlled the supporters outside. The next day, a priest in charge of matters of the church building spoke to the squatters and stated he will tolerate the occupation for one week. Immediately activists began to form work groups, trying to renovate the building to establish a social center. [Read More]

We are confronted with a brutal European austerity regime which continues to transform our livelihoods into financial assets for global speculation, which violates the universal right to housing every day, which destroys democracy at all levels and has no socially acceptable solution for the crisis of capitalism. Not only since the crisis it is the poor and excluded who get hit by this system especially hard: un- and underemployed, homeless, precarious workers, immigrants, Roma, students, single mums, and everybody who is not willing to fit into a capitalist mode of reproduction. This group is now becoming the majority of society.

How the capitalist systems plays out in the diverse housing markets in Europe might be different, but the underlying logic of neoliberal politics, privatization and financialization of our homes is the same.

This is why we aim to stand up, to unite our struggles and to broaden our movements. We will not let us be divided by neoliberal politics.